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Published - Business

Open-source software is an increasingly popular software development and distribution model that may spread further in the face of financial constraints in our current economy. With publicly available source code generally offered without charge, it is tempting to look to open source for potentially significant cost savings in this time of need. But not so fast.

Linux administration is difficult to learn, especially for Windows administrators who have a background with graphical tools for administration. Here's a few basic tips for teaching Linux administrators in a classroom setting.

In order to appease European regulators, Oracle has made a number of commitments to the future of MySQL. According to a statement overnight (Australian time), Oracle has made a number of public commitments regarding MySQL in order to ease the concerns of European Union regulators investigating the proposed Oracle – Sun merger.

Free Software Foundation Europe congratulates the European Commission on pushing Microsoft to give users greater choice between different browsers. "The selection screen will make users aware that they can make their own choices," says Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's President. "We are glad that FSFE has helped the Commission to put limits to Microsoft's desktop monopoly."

The Mobile Version of the much celebrated Firefox Web Browser is all set to roll out this month. Facing tough competition to Opera Mini Browser, Firefox Mobile will be first available in Nokia's new N900 handset. The N900 runs on Maemo operating system which is yet another Linux inspired software.

Where virtualization is concerned, "free" certainly doesn't equate with "cheap". Sun's VirtualBox is a perfect example of that. For non-commercial use, it's a cost-free hypervisor that's feature-robust, offers great performance and stability, and supports a wide-variety of guest operating systems.

Red Hat actually opened up the SPICE protocol yesterday during their Virtual Experience 2009 event. Somehow I missed that. Have a look at the press release if you are interested... as well as their site to house the new open source project - spice-space.org.

For roughly two years, readers have told WorksWithU they have a difficult time finding Ubuntu desktop and laptop options on Dell’s U.S. Website. Apparently, Dell heard the constructive criticism. Only a few weeks after Windows 7's launch, Dell is giving Ubuntu more real estate on the Dell U.S. website. Here's the scoop.

The first day of a Linux training situation sets the tone for the rest of the class. With on-site Linux training this is especially important as you are working with people face to face and you need to demonstrate Linux content as well as the ability to communicate.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat today kicked out the 1.2 release of its Enterprise MRG Linux variant for real-time, messaging, and grid computing. Enterprise MRG was launched as an idea in December 2007 in the wake of Novell's roll-out of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Real-Time variant of its SLES server Linux distro a month earlier.

MySQL use declining, PostgreSQL and MariaDB use rising and no majority support for any of the possible outcomes of the current European Commission investigation into Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems; these are some of the results of a survey, carried out by the 451 Group, of open source users show which shows they are split over the future of MySQL.

Flickr isn't just for photo sharing and social networking; it's a legitimate business tool. Learn how Perl programmers can use the CPAN Chart modules to create charts and graphs, and the Flickr::Upload module to upload the charts to Flickr.